


be kind

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: SVU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Tony Stark, the calming presence of olivia benson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “If it’s okay,” Benson says, "I’d like to ask you some questions about an old babysitter of yours. Steven Westcott.”[aka Law & Order: Spidey Victims Unit]
Relationships: Background Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 526





	be kind

**Author's Note:**

> drunk ✔️  
> watching svu ✔️  
> missing tony stark ✔️

RESIDENCE OF PETER PARKER.

QUEENS, NEW YORK. MAY 1, 2028.

When he hears the knock on the door, Peter figures MJ just forgot her keys again. She’s always doing that—tossing her keys in the general direction of the ceramic bowl on the hall table, not picking them up when they bounce to the floor, and getting so fed up trying to find them in the morning that she just says ‘fuck it’ and leaves without them.

Peter doesn’t mind having to let her back in; he thinks the whole thing’s kind of endearing, just like how she can brew a pot of coffee _literally_ in her sleep. But it’s not MJ.

“Peter Parker?” the woman asks.

She looks to be in her sixties, salt and pepper hair pulled back in a neat twist at the back of her head. Peter notices the gun on her hip before he sees the badge. At the sight of it a million illogical thoughts race through his mind: something happened to May, something happened to MJ, something happened to Ned; they figured out he’s Spider-Man and they’re here to arrest him, except—no. The detective’s alone. If the NYPD wanted to bring in a superhero, they’d probably bring more firepower. Not that Peter would fight them, but. Still.

“Yeah,” he says, after a pause that’s way too long. “Is someone hurt?”

The woman smiles and puts her badge away. “No, nothing like that, Mr. Parker. I’m Captain Olivia Benson, Special Victims Unit. Can I come in so we can talk?”

“Uh, sure.” Peter steps aside.

Captain Benson walks past him into the apartment, then waits for Peter to lead the way. He closes the door and takes her into the kitchen. It’s not the cleanest room in the house—dirty dishes in the sink, MJ’s half-eaten bagel on the table, a small but respectable colony of ants encamped on the window sill—but he’s not entirely certain he didn’t leave any incriminating Spider-Man evidence out on the coffee table, so the kitchen is the safest bet. As long as she doesn’t ask him to open the fridge. There’s a lot of web fluid stored in there.

“Cup of coffee?” he asks Benson. “I can make a fresh pot.” He doesn’t really feel like doing that at all, but May raised him with good manners.

“I’m okay, thank you,” Benson says. She motions to the table, and Peter nods.

They sit down. Some repressed part of Peter must already know why Benson’s here, because he can’t seem to stop his heartbeat from racing. His palms are clammy. He feels flushed around his face and his neck, like he might need to dive for the sink to vomit. But he doesn’t really, consciously know why, not until Benson says, “If it’s okay, I’d like to ask you some questions about an old babysitter of yours. Steven Westcott.”

Peter’s whole body freezes. There’s no other way to describe it—he suddenly feels like he’s outside of himself, watching the kitchen table from somewhere over near the stove. “I, um—“ he says, and then can’t find any more words. He scrubs his hand over his face, trying to get the numb feeling out of his brain. He can feel it all welling up in his throat, memories from when he was eight years old and terrified every day, terrified of Skip and terrified of the dark and terrified of telling anyone. The memories stay back, for now, but he can feel them coming.

“Did he,” he hears himself ask. “Did he do it again?”

“Do what again, Mr. Parker?”

“You know,” Peter says, choked. “If you’re here, then you already know.”

Benson’s watching him with kind, understanding eyes. “I really need to hear it from you, Peter. I’m sorry. I know this is hard.”

Peter nods. “Skip was my babysitter when I was eight. He was sixteen.” His hands shake. He clasps them together in his lap, trying to keep them steady. The bones grind under the strength of his grip. “He…” Peter’s throat clams up. All the memories are rushing back, overlapping and interlinking like people trying to yell over each other, a whole auditorium full of people.

“Take your time,” Benson tells him gently.

Peter nods, mortified to feel that his eyes are burning. It was a lifetime ago, he’s a fucking _superhero_ , he shouldn’t be reacting like this. It shouldn’t feel this _fresh_. But then again, Peter supposes he never really did any healing. Can’t expect a wound to close without stitches.

It takes him a long minute to find his voice again, staring at the dried yellow cream cheese on MJ’s bagel. “He molested me,” he says, when he does. “He, um. He raped me, a few times. But that was, you know. Not as often. I think he had to do more planning, for that, so he wouldn’t get caught. So he wouldn’t leave any noticeable damage.”

“You’re probably right, Peter.” Captain Benson doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t recoil like Peter always expected someone to do, if he told them. “How long did this go on?”

Peter’s ridiculously grateful that she asked him a question. He doesn’t have to figure out what to say himself, any more. “A few months. I wasn’t really—eight year olds don’t look at calendars too often, you know, but I remember the first time was the day I got to wear my Halloween costume to school. I was a spider. And my aunt fired him around the end of the winter break.”

“Did you tell your aunt what Westcott was doing to you? Did you tell anyone?”

Peter shakes his head, tight-lipped. The first tear slips down his cheeks. He dashes it away quickly, angry with himself. “How many other kids, after me?”

“We’ve found six other victims, so far.”

Peter chokes, and he can’t stop more tears from falling, now. “I should’ve said something,” his voice is thick, nasally. “I could’ve stopped him. All those other kids...”

_When you can do the things I can do,_ Peter remembers himself saying, more than a decade ago, _and you don’t, and the bad things happen, they happen because of you._

“You were eight, Peter.” Benson leans toward him across the table, a comforting touch without the imposition of _actual_ touch. “You’re a victim. None of this is your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter can barely draw enough breath to form the words. “I’m so sorry—“

“The only one with anything to apologize for is Steven Westcott,” Benson says, emphatic. “And now that we have him, he’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”

Peter knows that she can’t really keep a promise like that, knows first-hand, but it still makes him feel better. He nods, wiping the mess of tears off his face with the end of his overlong sleeve. “What can I do?” he asks, when he’s got himself under control. “How can I help?”

Benson looks a little surprised that he wants to help. “The man we have in custody used a number of aliases for his nannying jobs. It made it hard to establish a pattern at first, which was why he got away without a trace for as long as he did. It means we need someone to identify him for each alias. We’ve only found two victims who knew him by the name ‘Steven Westcott,’ and the other is a twelve year old girl. Since her wounds are more recent, we’d prefer not to put her through a line up, if we can help it.”

“Of course,” Peter says. “Yeah, of course. Anything you need.”

NYPD SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK. MAY 1, 2028.

Peter thought he was ready. Really, he did. He thought distance and time would’ve done enough to steel him, despite his reaction in his apartment this afternoon, but the second the blinds go up on the one-way mirror and he’s looking at a line up of five Skip lookalikes and one of the _real thing_ , it’s like he’s eight years old again, hiding in the bathroom while his babysitter bangs on the door.

He manages to stay standing long enough to say, “Number four.”

“I need you to identify him by name,” Benson says gently. She and the ADA with her are watching him patiently, solemnly, but without emotion. He guesses if he did this every day, like he deals with crooks every day, he’d be pretty tuned-out, too.

“Skip— _Steven_ Westcott. The man who abused me. He’s number four.”

Captain Benson pulls the blinds down and guides Peter away with a hand on of his shoulder. His feet move without input from his brain. She guides him into a private interview room and has him sit down on the couch, then crouches in front of him. “Can I get you anything, Mr. Parker? Something to drink? Water? A cup of coffee?”

Peter blinks numbly, staring at the mottled brown carpet. He’s glad that he can’t see the bullpen from in here, with the blinds drawn, because he’s not sure he could handle looking out at the six little kids he saw sitting at the desks being interviewed on his way in. He thinks if he _did_ see them again, in this state, he might break in half.

“Is this normal?” he asks Benson, helplesssly. “People who were molested so long ago, when you talk to them…Is it usually like this?”

“It’s not uncommon for victims to feel vulnerable, scared, even angry when they’re asked to revisit past trauma. Nothing you’re experiencing is unusual.”

Somehow that doesn’t make the hot, nauseous feeling in Peter’s chest any better. He does his best to muster a smile, but it doesn’t really feel like it comes across. “I think,” he croaks, weakly. “I think that coffee sounds pretty good, actually.”

Benson gives him a gentle smile. “Okay, Peter. Is there anyone I can call to take you home?”

“I, um…” Peter shakes his head slowly. He can’t imagine calling MJ. For all that he loves her—and loves her a lot, so much he feels like he’s going to break in half when she smiles at him, bleary-eyed and soft, first thing in the morning—they tend to limit their discussion of emotional issues to a few sentences. When Peter said he loved her for the first time, she’d said _Cool. Me too._ and they’d gone back to making out on the couch. If he called her, she’d come get him. Of course she would. But he’s not sure he can handle hearing her adept three-word summation of all this.

He can’t call May. He knows he can’t call May. She’s too close to it. She’d been there while it was happening, she argued with Ben about whether to fire Skip when Peter complained that he didn’t like him, that Skip was mean to him. Peter doesn’t blame her for anything—he never did. But he knows when she finds out, she’ll blame herself, and he can’t take the weight of her guilt on top of his own, right now.

But there is one person he wants to see. One person he always trusts to take care of everything, when he doesn’t have the faculties to do it himself. “Yeah, actually,” he tells Benson. “Yeah, um. Tony Stark. His number’s in my phone.”

He pulls the glass panel of his Starktech phone out of his pocket and gives it to her, unlocked. It’s probably dumb to hand his phone unlocked to a cop when he has a secret identity to protect, but he trusts Captain Benson. She slips out of the room and closes the door behind her, leaving Peter alone in the dim lighting on that couch, where he bets all the victims sit.

He’s not sure how long he’s in that room before the door opens again. While he’s in there, he drifts, listening to the noise of cars and sirens on the street downstairs, the ambient noise of eight million people packed into one city.

Of all the things Peter’s been through in his life—Thanos, the Blip, both Green Goblins, Venom, the whole multiverse fiasco last year—this is the last one he would’ve expected to come back to bite him. It happened so long ago, and Peter almost never thinks about it except when he rescues a child from a predator. Even then, the sort of back-alley kidnappers Peter deals with are such a far cry from being attacked by your own babysitter that Skip barely ever crosses his mind. He doesn’t feel _shaped_ by his abuse, not in the way he’s heard people talk about.

But now, sitting here…Peter can’t help but picture himself, eight years old, sitting on this same couch between May and Ben. Trying to explain with his third grade vocabulary what had happened to him, something that he didn’t even really understand. Just like Skip’s other victims. The ones he should’ve saved. The ones sitting out in the bullpen right now.

He picks up the coffee Captain Benson brought him, just to have something to do with his hands. It’s cold now, but he drinks it anyways. It’s habit, and it’s sort of comforting, how bad cold coffee always tastes. It tides him over. But it still doesn’t make him feel any better.

Finally, the door opens again, and Tony rushes in.

A detective closes the door behind him. Tony stands just inside for a long moment, all that sharp energy from his entrance winding him up tighter, tenser, as he stares at Peter across the room. He’s stopped coloring his hair. It’s fully gray now. He doesn’t bother with the flashy suits anymore, and he’s never held his arm the same way ever since he nearly died reversing the Snap. These past few years he’s started to really look like he’s settling into his retirement. But he’s still _Iron Man_ , he’s still Peter’s hero. He’s still Mr. Stark.

Peter sets his empty coffee cup down on the couch and surges to his feet at the same moment Tony strides to meet him. They crash in a hug—the same sort of hug they shared on the battlefield after the reversal, life-affirming and desperate. Peter realizes he’s shaking, and then realizes he’s crying, and then realizes Tony’s murmuring, trying to soothe him. “ _Shh,_ Pete,” he’s saying, his hand moving up and down Peter’s back. “I’m here. I’ve got you. Whatever it is, we’ll handle it.”

“Sorry,” Peter says thickly, pulling back. He rubs his nose on his sleeve. “Sorry—“

“Hey.” Tony keeps his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Come on, kid. I thought we did away with that apologizing thing when you were still a teeny-bopper. You don’t have to say sorry to me, ever. Not unless you get smoothie all over my kitchen.”

“That only happened three times,” Peter mumbles automatically.

Tony smiles, eyes crinkling. But there’s still concern etched into the deep lines of his face, and Peter knows there’s no way he’s getting out of the question of why Tony just got called down to the Special Victims Unit at seven p.m. on a Tuesday. He doesn’t even want to, really, which is why he called Tony and not Ned or Happy or Matt Murdock. Tony’s going to ask, and Peter wants to tell him everything. He wants it off his chest, once and for all.

“Kid…” Tony says, after a minute. “You know you can tell me anything.”

Peter rubs his eyes. They feel red and raw already, and he knows he’s not done crying. “Can you ask me?” he says, and hates the sound of his own voice. Weak. Tremulous. “I want to tell you, I just—it’s easier, if you ask me questions.”

They sit. Peter pulls his legs up on the couch, facing Tony, like he’s fifteen again, not twenty-seven. It’s his second regression of the day, this feeling younger in Tony’s presence, but it’s much less painful. It’s not painful at all, actually. He feels safe. Even with the man who raped him when he was eight years old sitting right down the hall in a holding cell, he feels safe.

“Okay, Pete,” Tony says. “What are you doing here?”

Peter swallows. He tries to think of this like any time Tony grills him with questions in the lab, like they’re just having a witty back and forth over exposed circuitry. “A detective came to my apartment. The captain, actually. She said she needed me to pick someone out of a line up.”

“Who?”

“My old babysitter. Skip Westcott.”

“And why did they need you to identify him?”

“He, um.” Peter feels the tears streaming down his face again, past his open mouth, onto his chin. He doesn’t bother trying to get rid of them. “He molested some kids.”

Tony’s voice sounds tense now, like he’s trying to avoid crying himself. “Did he molest you, Pete?”

Peter sobs. He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, biting the skin, not wanting to make so much noise—just like he never wanted to make noise when he used to cry at night in Ben and May’s apartment, so scared that they’d find the bloody pajamas in a trash bag under his bed, that they’d find them and they’d know, like Skip had told him they’d know, what a disgusting, awful, _sick_ boy he was. But Tony hears, Tony _sees_ , and he doesn’t recoil, he doesn’t leave Peter alone, he reaches out and pulls him into a strong, steadying hug.

“Yeah,” Peter manages to say, into Tony’s shoulder. “Yeah, he did.”

Tony drops his head on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter can feel the warm spread of his tears through his shirt. “I’ll kill him,” he says. “He’s here, isn’t he? You say the word, and I’ll kill him.”

“You’re not gonna kill him,” Peter mumbles, tired.

Tony pulls away, the look on his face utterly dead-set. “I am. That monster hurt one of my kids. Big mistake. He’s a dead man walking—“

“I don’t need you to kill him,” Peter says, because Tony seems like he might actually be about to call the suit. “He’s going to prison. I just need you to be here.”

The determined expression on Tony’s face softens. “I’m here, Pete.” he assures him. “Whenever you need me. However long. I’m here.”

The Tony Peter met back in high school would never have been so level headed. But this isn’t that Tony. This Tony has been through more loss than a person can comprehend, than Peter can really comprehend. He’s come back from the dead. He’s saved the world, _more than once_. He’s saved the entire fucking universe. He’s talked Morgan into bed on Christmas Eve, convinced Pepper to marry him, invented time travel, reconciled with the man who murdered his parents. Just last week, he spent _nine hours_ in the diamond district, helping Peter pick out a ring.

He’s older and wiser, yeah, but it’s not just time that’s done this, Peter knows. It’s experience. And he’s not sure, if all this had come to light while he was still a high schooler, if Tony would have been the one he called. If Tony would have helped, instead of hurt.

But now, Peter reaches for him, and Tony’s there; exactly what he needs.

“What do you need, kid?” Tony asks, chin tucked over Peter’s head. “More questions?”

“No,” Peter says. “No more questions. Let’s go home.”

On the way out, Tony waiting near the intake desk with his jacket (and Peter’s) in his hands, Peter stops and knocks on Captain Benson’s door. She waves him inside. He closes the door behind him and sits down in the chair opposite her desk.

She gives him another of those kind smiles. “You were a great help to us today, Mr. Parker.”

“Don’t mention it, really.” Peter shifts in the chair. He’s nervous, but confident in his decision, so he’s not going to let himself chicken out. “Look, do you need me to testify?”

Benson looks surprised, just like she did when he first offered to help, back in his apartment. “I’m not sure yet, Mr. Parker. That will be for the ADA who’s assigned to the case to decide.”

Peter nods. “If you do need my testimony, you can have it. Anything that spares one of those kids out there from having to go through all that. But there’s something you should probably know, if you do ask me, and…it’s sort of, well, sensitive information.”

Benson’s watching him intently, but she doesn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue. He forces himself to meet her eyes. “I’m Spider-Man.”

She doesn’t do any of the things he was afraid of. She doesn’t leap up immediately and rush to tell the whole bullpen; she doesn’t loose a barrage of questions about why, if he has superpowers, he couldn’t work up the nerve to come forward about his molestation, to do something about Skip Westcott; she doesn’t rip off a holographic mask and reveal herself to be J. Jonah Jameson. She just raises her eyebrows a little, and says, “I figured something was going on, when you asked me to call an Avenger to come get you.”

Peter’s not sure whether to laugh or not, but there’s a sort of amused tilt to her head, so he thinks it’s probably safe. So he does.

She smiles with him. “Don’t worry. If the world’s most dedicated supervillains can’t root out your secret identity, I’m sure a defense attorney can’t, either.”

“Thanks, Captain Benson.”

Benson shakes her head, standing, and holds out her hand. “No, Peter. Thank _you_.”

Peter grabs her hand, shakes it, and completely out of the blue, feels the last of that hot, tight feeling in his chest dissipate. Because he might not have turned Skip in all those years ago, he might not have come forward when it was actually happening, but he was _eight_ , he was _traumatized._ He needs to cut himself some slack. He’s here now. He’s helping _now_. And that counts for something.

Out in the bullpen, Tony watches him with a careful gaze as he helps him shrug into his coat. “You okay, kid? You have that happy, post-battle twinkle in your eye.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, to all of it.

Tony looks at him askance, which is fair, because _Yeah_ isn’t really a grammatically or logically correct response to that question. But he doesn’t press anymore. They go down to the supercar that Tony left parked on the front step, the windshield stuffed full of enough parking tickets to paper a room, and Tony drives him back to the tower in companionable silence, listening to Morgan’s _Harry Potter_ book on tape. _Let’s go home_ , Peter had said, and home, for him, is right here.


End file.
